Pitch is generally understood as a perception of a tonality of a sound. In the context of speech, a change in pitch of may convey contextual information regarding the speaker's mood or intent, as well as a variety of other effective or affective states. For example, a speaker may change the pitch of the speaker's voice to convey sarcasm, emphasis, or emotion. Additionally, pitch may differentiate two chromatically similar words in tonic languages, such as Mandarin Chinese.